The usually reserved Rahul Bose, known for taking things in his stride, seems to have hit a road block. The promos for the actor’s upcoming horror film,
Fired
, have run into trouble with the Censor Board, and have been deemed inappropriate to be aired on Indian television. Reason: there was too much blood and gore as well as nudity in them.
Bose feels the Censor Board has forgotten to take things in the right context. “Contextually, in a horror film, you know that all the scares and the blood and the severed heads are in the realm of fantasy and aren’t real. I’m frankly surprised and don’t know what the next step is going to be,” he says. Bose also says reports claiming that he’s the one who’s posed nude are “utter nonsense”. “I don’t take off a hanky in the film. There is nudity in the film, but to the relief of millions of Indians, it’s not me who’s posing nude,” he says.Bose takes a strong stand against censorship in general. “Each Censor Board has their own style of censoring, so it becomes subjective. I’m not in favour of censorship at all. I’m in favour of self censorship,” he says.
Ashish Bhatnagar, Chief Executive, I Dream Production, the company which has produced the film, is spitting fire. “There is hypocrisy in the system. At one level we have television channels showing horror shows, so the audience in India is already exposed to all the blood and gore and the Censor Board has no control over that. But as a filmmaker, I’m not allowed to promote my film,” he rues.
Ashish Bhatnagar, Chief Executive, I Dream Production, the company which has produced the film, is spitting fire. “There is hypocrisy in the system. At one level we have television channels showing horror shows, so the audience in India is already exposed to all the blood and gore and the Censor Board has no control over that. But as a filmmaker, I’m not allowed to promote my film,” he rues.